New Studies in the Philosophy of Descartes: Descartes as Pioneer

Nature did not make human brains first, and then construct things according to their capacity of understanding, but she first made things in her own fashion and then so constructed the human understanding that it, though at the price of great exertion, might ferret out a few of her secrets. "-- GALILEO, Opere, vii, p. 341 (cited and translated by
E. A. Burtt).

"It is not accidental to the human body to be united to the mind, but its very nature [ipisissima ejus natura]; because, as the body has all the dispositions requisite for receiving the mind, and without it is not properly the human body, it could not without a miracle happen that the mind should not be united to it."--DESCARTES in letter to Regius.

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